Do you present technical or detail-oriented information at meetings or conferences?

Would you like for your audience to enjoy the experience, understand what you are saying, and remember the key points?

 

This 2-Day Workshop will help you:

• Select the right amount and depth of content
• Create truly memorable audiovisuals and avoid  “Death by PowerPoint®”
• Keep your audience engaged from start to finish
• Cause the comprehension and retention of your key points
• Overcome (or at least subdue!) the “fear of public speaking”

Our Approach:

We leverage research-based principles from cognitive science that can help make any technical presentation more engaging, comprehensible, and retentive.

What types of technical presentations can be improved using this approach?

• Legal
• Medical
• Financial
• Business
• Scientific
• Engineering
• And many others

What Makes This Workshop Unique?

Three things:

• Unlike many “how to give a presentation” courses, we focus on the engagement of your audience and whether or not they will comprehend and remember your key points, not on the number of times you say “um”.
• We focus on technical or detail-oriented content and base our approach on research from cognitive science.
• We give you the opportunity to hone your skills by doing a practice presentation with your own content and getting feedback and suggestions from fellow attendees regarding its effectiveness.

 

Course Concept:

This is a true workshop. All key skills will be demonstrated by the instructor and practiced by participants throughout the 2-day experience. Participants will be asked to bring a segment from an actual technical presentation to be used for practice purposes.

Course Objectives

By the end of this workshop, participants will be able to:

• Recognize common challenges faced by both presenters and audience members in a technical presentation environment
• Describe the research-based principles that can make technical presentations more effective
• Select the appropriate volume and depth of content to be included in a technical presentation
• Use a variety of techniques to capture the attention and interest of an audience, keep them engaged, and cause and the comprehension and retention of important points; these techniques will include questions, analogies, repetition, stories, humor, mnemonics, and others
• Create and use PowerPoint slides in accordance with research-based principles of visual design
• Start a technical presentation in a positive, motivational way
• Use eye contact, voice inflection, gestures and body movement to stimulate engagement
• Configure a meeting room to support, not repress, audience interaction
• Deal effectively with the occasional problem behavior or disruptive situation

Course Topics

• Technical Presentation Challenges: A discussion of the challenges faced by both presenters and audience members in a technical presentation environment; what we have learned from neuroscience and cognitive psychology.
• Content validation: How to know what content to include and what to discard; how to avoid “information overload”.
• Presentation Strategies: How to keep an audience engaged; the strategic use of questions, analogies, stories, humor, repetition, mnemonics, and others.
• Feedback Strategies: How to verify they’re really “getting it”.
• The Effective Use of Audiovisuals: How to create and use audiovisuals in accordance with best practices of visual design; How to avoid “death by PowerPoint”.

• Practice Presentations: Participants will be given time to prepare a short practice presentation that they will deliver to a small group of their fellow attendees, followed by a constructive feedback session.

• Icebreaking and Handling Problem Behaviors: How to start a technical presentation in a positive and motivational way; how to handle the occasional disruptive situation or problem behavior.

• Platform Skills: How to use eye contact, voice inflection, gestures, and body movement to stimulate an audience; how to overcome the dreaded “speaking anxiety”.

• Room set up: How to configure a meeting room to facilitate maximum interaction and engagement.